The Library provides access to a wide variety of subscription databases, electronic journals and e-books to its members. This section lists the resources that are available both in and outside of the Library.

Databases for Library members

The newspapers and news pamphlets, gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817) represent the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available from the British Library. The collection includes more than 1000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period, including the first successful London daily and first illustrated newspaper.

British newspapers from the 19th century selected by the British Library's editorial board. Includes both national and regional newspapers. All newspapers are full text and fully searchable. Full runs are available where possible.

This resource consists of almost 100 academically selected titles and approximately 1.2 million pages. It focuses on the birth of modern magazine publishing in the UK between 1800 and 1900. This collection allows full text search of original periodical content. Images, including approximately 8000 in colour, are also included. Wellcome Library also subscribes to Series 2: Empire.

An online collection of British magazines, journals and specialty newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals provides an in-depth view of British life in the Victorian age. Series 2: Empire addresses the economic as well as the non-mercantile aspects of British expansionism. Wellcome Library also subscribes to Series 1: new readerships.

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is an online, fully searchable collection of over 4000 books in the humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars. Particular strengths of the collection are history of medicine, religion, archaeology, art history and folklore.

Containing biographical articles on 258 000 individuals, the French Biographical Archive Online covers France, the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and the francophone colonies. The indexed sources were published from 1647 through to the 1990s.

Contains a large number of databases and tools for family history research. Includes the UK Medical Registers 1859-1959, London Parish records and birth, marriage and death records, UK and US census records, and many more publications.

Containing biographical articles on 258 000 individuals, the French Biographical Archive Online covers France, the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and the francophone colonies. The indexed sources were published from 1647 through to the 1990s.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index indexes over 1100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 6800 major science and social science journals from 1975 to present. Disciplines covered include art, folklore, history, literature, philosophy and religion. Part of Web of Science.

BFI Screenonline is an online encyclopaedia of British film and television. It features hundreds of hours of film and television clips from the vast collections of the BFI National Archive, and several hours of recorded interviews with film and television personalities. These clips are supplemented by authoritative contextual material by expert writers, alongside thousands of stills, posters and press books.

The Brill Journal Archive Online provides access to more than 80 journals published by Brill before 2000. The resource has content relevant to biology, the humanities, human rights, international law, science and the social sciences.

The British Biographical Archive Online features the biographies of 368 000 individuals from all chapters of British history, ranging from pre-Roman times to the 20th century, and all walks of life. It covers individuals from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well as from all former colonies. The indexed 593 sources were published between 1601 and 1974.

British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth. It consists of two separate collections, British Periodicals Collection I and British Periodicals Collection II. British Periodicals Collection I consists of more than 160 journals that comprise the UMI microfilm collection Early British Periodicals, the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes containing approximately 3.1 million pages. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences. British Periodicals Collection II consists of more than 300 journals from the UMI microfilm collections English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts together with additional titles, amounting to almost 3 million pages. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

CUP Archive comprises 171 unique titles (plus some additional earlier versions of journals, no longer current) stretching back from 1827 through to approximately 1996. Some of the key subject areas covered are history, Asian studies, politics and economics, language, philosophy and religion, medicine and physical sciences.

The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing.

Provides information on the history of science through articles on the professional lives of scientists. All periods of science from classical antiquity to modern times are represented.

Anywhere with Library card

Conference Proceedings Citation IndexFacilitates access to the published literature from conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops and conventions worldwide. Two editions cover the sciences and social sciences. Part of the Web of Science, coverage is from 1945 to the present.

The Data Citation Index forms part of the Web of Science, incorporating content from data sets and data studies deposited in over 80 established, curated repositories from around the world. Subjects included are social sciences, physical sciences, life sciences and arts and humanities. Coverage is from 2008 to the present.

Dawsonera is an e-book platform. The Wellcome Library makes some titles available on this platform. When you first arrive in Dawsonera, you will need to agree to terms and conditions before accessing content.

The German Biographical Archive Online features biographical information on over 200 000 individuals published from 1707 to the 1980s. It also includes works published in Austria, Switzerland, former or partly German-speaking areas such as East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and Livland.

From the first book published in English through to the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this collection contains about 100 000 full text books of over 125 000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Covers many subject areas, including history, philosophy, theology, fine arts, education and science.

Digital versions of printed sources from the 15th to 17th centuries. All works printed in Europe before 1701, regardless of language, are included, together with all pre-1701 works in European languages printed further afield.

Early Modern Letters Online is a combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence: a collaboratively populated union catalogue of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century letters. Includes some material from the Wellcome Library.

Aims to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701-1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the 18th century.

Electronic Enlightenment provides access to thousands of letters from 6500 correspondents on every conceivable subject from the greatest thinkers and writers and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. EE also provides biographical information on over 5000 individuals, with links to over 1000 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries. Coverage is from the 17th to 19th century.

Essential Science Indicators enables researchers to conduct ongoing, qualitative analyses of research performance and track trends in science. Researchers can rank top scientists, institutions, countries and journals in specific fields of research. The resource covers a multidisciplinary selection of over 11 000 journals from around the world; this is available as a ten-year rolling file that covers 10 million articles in 22 specific fields of research.

Provides citations and full text access to nursing and allied health journals, reference books, Clinical Reference Systems topical overviews, newsletters, health pamphlets, consumer health magazines and newspaper articles. Full text access is available for the subscribed years only. This varies for each title.

The HPB Database is a collection of files of catalogue records from major European and North American research libraries covering items of European printing of the hand-press period (c.1455-c.1830). As the digitisation of collections in contributing libraries progresses, more and more catalogue records point to digital presentations of the early printed books.

Historical Texts brings together three historically significant collections of printed sources: Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and 65 000 texts from the British Library 19th Century collection. Coverage is from the 15th to 19th century.

This database integrates four bibliographies—the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza and the Wellcome Library —to create the definitive international database for the history of science, technology and medicine. Coverage is from 1975 onwards.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers includes over 200 000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP delivers page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with a detailed subject index.

The Illustrated London News Historical Archive gives online access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. It presented a vivid picture of British and world events, including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science.

A comprehensive listing of theses with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in Great Britain and Ireland since 1716. Also provides links to some 50 000 full text theses available online for free downloads from university repositories as well as the EThOS site.

A cross-searchable platform containing more than 3.75 million articles from the archives of 450 journals, from Brill, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Physics, ProQuest, Oxford University Press and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

This collection provides access to thousands of items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Categories include Nineteenth-Century Entertainment, the Booktrade, Popular Prints, Crimes, Murders and Executions, and Advertising.

Gives access selected collections of scholarly full text journals on the JSTOR platform. Collections included are: Arts and Sciences I, Health and General Sciences Collection and Early Journal Content. Coverage dates back to 1665.

This selection, largely originating in the British Library, contains mostly Hebrew printed editions and covers the spectrum of Maimonides’ literary output. Imprints from the 16th to the 20th century can be seen as landmark texts in the history of Hebrew printing. Illustrating the wider appeal of Maimonides’ writings are examples of bilingual editions containing Hebrew and either Latin, Judeo-German or French text.

The NSTC Project was established in 1983 and has 1.2 million entries. It aims to provide increasingly complete listings of British books printed between 1801-1919. British books are taken to include all books published in Britain, its colonies and the United States of America; all books in English wherever published; and all translations from English.

A collection of over 59,000 biographies which describe the lives of men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. Entries offer detailed and extensive biographical information drawn from primary and secondary sources. Theme articles are also included.

A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600 000 words - past and present - from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings.

Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) Web is a digital archive of classic psychoanalytic texts. PEP Archive 1 version 10 (1871-2007) contains the full text of 42 psychoanalytic journals, complete versions of 58 classic psychoanalytic texts and all 24 volumes of the standard edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

Popular Medicine in America presents materials from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s extensive collection. The resource documents the history of ‘popular’ medicine in America during the 19th century, featuring a wide variety of material that was aimed at the general public rather than medical professionals, and which enabled the ordinary person to treat himself and his family at home using an array of inventive methods and fashionable techniques.

The RSC Journals Archive contains all articles published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (and its forerunner societies) from 1841 (the first issue of Memoirs and Proceedings of the Chemical Society) to 2004 (as of Sept. 2008) including top titles such as ChemComm, The Analyst, PCCP, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry and Dalton Transactions.

A multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the sciences. It indexes more than 5700 major journals across 164 scientific disciplines. It contains searchable, full-length, English-language author abstracts for approximately 70% of the articles in the database. Part of Web of Science. Coverage is from 1945 to the present.

A multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. Part of Web of Science. Coverage is from 1945 to the present.

A database of reproducible laboratory protocols in the Life and Biomedical Sciences. Compiling protocols from Humana’s successful book series Methods in Molecular Biology, Methods in Molecular Medicine, Methods in Biotechnology, Methods in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Neuromethods, as well as from a vast number of Laboratory Handbooks.

The SEP is a living reference work, in which each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and updates are refereed by the members of an editorial board before they are made public. SEP covers wide variety of subject disciplines within the sciences and humanities, including aesthetics, ethics, feminism, philosophy of law, logic, metaphysics and philosophy of science.

Over 1500 magazines published between 1914 and the end of 1919 by service personnel of the First World War are searchable online providing a resource from which to research alternative perspectives on the conflict. Published by every type of military and support service unit, from every involved nation, trench journals were a means of expression through which men and women engaged in all aspects of World War I could share their thoughts and experiences.

The collection of letters of the Nuremberg physician and natural scientist Christoph Jakob Trew (1695-1769) is the largest known collection of letters with an emphasis on medicine and science, and one of the largest collections in Germany. It contains about 19,000 letters and drafts from 700 authors from the 16th-18th centuries.

Who's Who contains information on over 32,000 people, detailing birthdays, families, education, titles, career, publications and creative works, personal interests, clubs and addresses. While Who's Who profiles the living, Who Was Who collects together the entries of more than 100,000 people who were included in the register but have died since 1897.

Compiles biographical articles from printed reference works published from the 16th to the 20th century. The Wellcome Library subscription includes four databases in various languages: American Biographical Archive, Archives Biographiques Françaises, British Biographical Archive and Deutsches Biographisches Archive.

Indexes over 29 000 journals and more than 52 million article citations and conference papers through the British Library’s electronic table of contents. You can set-up personalised email Zetoc Alerts or RSS feeds to track the latest articles or journal titles related to your interests. Coverage is from 1993 to the present.